Rosie Lewis - Torn - A terrified girl. A shocking secret. A terrible choice.

Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.

HarperElement

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperElement 2016

FIRST EDITION

© Rosie Lewis 2016

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2016

Cover photograph © Vanessa Skotnitsky/Arcangel Images (posed by model)

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

Rosie Lewis asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

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Source ISBN: 9780008112974

Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780008112981

Version: 2015-11-17

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

By the same author

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue

Sample chapter of Skin Deep by Casey Watson

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A Small Boy’s Cry (e-short)

Two More Sleeps (e-short)

Betrayed

Unexpected (e-short)

Taylor hates weekends.

All she keeps whispering, over and over as she tiptoes around the house, is, ‘Come on, Monday, please come on.’ She doesn’t think anyone in the whole world wants Saturday to be over as much as she does. Dad’s eyes are on fire, like they’re about to explode. Mum’s lips have been white all day, pinched together like when there’s a sad bit on the news. She keeps picking things up, looking confused and then putting them down again.

Taylor knows something bad is going to happen; she can always tell. She glances from Dad to Mum, trying not to catch a glimpse of the spots of red on the carpet – her tummy goes funny when she remembers how they got there. Her little brother, Reece, huddles next to her on the sofa, his knees scrunched right up to his chin. He’s been crazy all day, grovelling around everyone and trying to please them. It makes Taylor sick.

She can’t wait to go to bed but it’s not even six o’clock. Jimmy, their Labrador, pads over and rests his chin on her lap. Every time one of them moves the puppy makes a noise, a sort of cross between a growl and a whimper. Taylor buries her face into his soft fur and cups her hand over his muzzle. ‘Shush, there’s a good boy, shush.’ When she looks up she sees that Mum has stopped tidying. She’s standing in front of them, a strange look on her face.

Taylor’s heart beats faster.

Dad hovers and, moving in slow motion, Mum starts tidying again, even though there’s nothing left to put away. Reece rubs his nose and sniffs. Taylor can feel his leg trembling.

Her eyes skirt slowly around the room. Things are definitely about to blow, she can feel it. Pretending to be calm, she tries to plan an escape route in her head like that girl in the Hideout cartoon, but it’s much harder than the website makes out. The front door is locked and she doesn’t know where the keys are. It occurs to her that one of the windows upstairs might be open, but then she remembers that Bailey is still in his cot and there’s no way she’s going to make a run for it without her baby brother. Oh, why can’t she think of something?

The wind blows outside the window and Taylor hears a clomping sound: footsteps on the pavement. Someone is walking past their house like none of this is going on. How can things carry on as normal, Taylor wonders, when everything is so wrong? Jimmy hears it too. His ears prick up and he jumps to his feet, barking. Mum’s head shoots round. Reece’s knees knock together.

For one hopeful second Taylor considers calling out for help but Jimmy starts howling and she freezes. His tail is buried so far between his legs that she can hardly see it. Keeping Mum in sight, Taylor edges closer to Jimmy and wraps her arms around his neck. ‘Please, Jimmy,’ she whispers, ‘it’s all right. Please don’t.’

Jimmy pulls away. He leaps around in circles, snapping at the air. Mum sways on her feet, her eyes flitting over the three of them. Taylor knows one of them is about to pay but she isn’t about to stand by and let her family get hurt, not again. She’s ten years old now and she’s been learning how to fight.

Ignoring the sick feeling in her tummy, she takes a deep breath and forces herself to her feet.

Maisie Stone eased the end of a biro between the wiry roots of her thick auburn dreadlocks, half-closing one eye as she twirled it around. Turning the radio on to mask our conversation, I reflected that the social worker wasn’t exactly what I’d envisaged when we’d spoken earlier that day, but then neither were the siblings waiting miserably upstairs in the spare room.

‘So, Rosie, this is kind of awkward,’ Maisie lisped, the words rolling over her silver-studded tongue so slowly that it was as if she needed winding up. Over the telephone she had spoken with such slow deliberateness that in my head she was nearing retirement. The woman sitting in front of me, with a thin leather bandana tied around her hair and taffeta skirt skimming her sandalled feet, had taken me completely by surprise. With her full lips and wide green eyes, there was an earthy appeal about Maisie, but the skin beneath her eyes was swollen and dotted with blemishes. By the way she was dressed I guessed she was in her early thirties at most, but somehow she seemed much older. Either that or she hadn’t slept in days. ‘When I picked them up I couldn’t believe there was one of each.’

‘You’d never met them before?’

Maisie’s beaded dreadlocks jingled as she shook her head. ‘No, their file landed on my desk at half past ten this morning. I only had time for, like, a quick flick through and when I saw Taylor described as a massive Chelsea fan I just assumed, what with her name and everything –’ her words trailed away and then she groaned, pulling her hands down her face. ‘Is there any way you could, like, jiggle things around to make it work?’